Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr.

Remarks to the Law Club of the City of Chicago

Chicago, IL

Wednesday, May 5, 1999

Good evening. Thank you, Geraldine, and thank you to all of the members of
the Law Club for inviting me to be here today. It is my privilege, both as Deputy
Attorney General and as a member of the bar, to be here. I thought I would talk about
two themes of very strong personal interest to me. The first concerns the Department
of Justice's projects regarding police integrity; the second concerns a plan to help
increase the contribution lawyers can make to promoting racial justice.

Police Integrity

As many of you know, America's communities have been trying to review the
ways in which police officers do their jobs, how they handle deadly confrontations, and
how they protect and respect the people they serve. There are nearly 700,000 law
enforcement officers nationwide, and the overwhelming majority of them are
hard-working public servants who do a dangerous job justly, fairly, with excellence and
with honor. They put their lives on the line every day in the pursuit of justice and public
safety, and they do that because they care about the people they are committed to
serving.

Professional and dedicated police officers have done so much across this country to
make their communities far better places to live. And the crime rate has fallen every
year for the past six years in virtually every category. The thousands of
community-oriented police officers who are on the streets have made a difference.

But some citizens, especially those in minority communities, are wondering whether
our success in reducing crime has been due in part to improperly aggressive police
officers who ignore the civil liberties of Americans. That concern has escalated and
shown a more public face following the tragic shooting death of Amadou Diallo in New
York two months ago.

And yet the issue is not what occurs in any one city -- be it New York or this great
city. The issue is national and touches people everywhere. For too many people,
especially in minority communities, the trust that is so essential to effective policing
does not exist because residents believe that police have used excessive force, that
law enforcement is too aggressive, that law enforcement is biased, rude, and unfair.

When minority communities, in the wake of a shooting, immediately assume the
police officer, not the suspect, is at fault, we all suffer. The tensions that arise between
the police and minority residents have serious consequences both in terms of effective
policing and community unrest. When citizens do not trust their local police officer, they
are less willing to report crime and less willing to be witnesses in criminal cases. When
there is a breach of trust, it means people are more distrustful of the police, more tense
when there is an encounter, and less likely to cooperate. As a result, police officers are
more tense, and are more likely to react with more force than necessary. Suddenly, a
routine encounter can become a deadly clash.

Over the past several months, the Attorney General and I have met with police
chiefs, union representatives, community leaders, and young people at risk, listening as
they have described the problem and made many suggestions that would generate trust
and build solid relationships. There is probably no item more important to safe
neighborhoods and civil rights than this task of improving relationships and building
greater trust between minority communities and law enforcement.

Police chiefs and rank and file officers alike agree. They believe that if we want to
maintain the trust and confidence of the community, we must take decisive action
against those few officers who violate their oaths and deny citizens their constitutional
rights by the use of excessive force or harassment. Police organizations, such as the
International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Police Executive Research Forum,
have stated very clearly that police activity that is race or ethnic-based is neither legal,
consistent with democratic ideals and principles of American policing, nor in any way
legitimate and defensible as a strategy for public protection.

As a result of what police and community groups have both expressed, the
Justice Department has announced a five-point plan. The first step is to expand and to
promote the kind of partnership and dialogue that develops the mutual trust and
confidence between police and the people they serve. The Justice Department is going
to hold a series of meetings between police and community organizations, and try to
focus on ways in which these two groups can work together. In this respect, the
concepts of community policing and community prosecution can teach us a great deal,
for they seek to improve public safety by involving the community and its residents in
establishing police and prosecutorial priorities and involving police officers and
prosecutors in the communities they serve. By breaking down suspicions, building up
the trust, the community-oriented police officer becomes the peacemaker and the
problem-solver without relinquishing his or her enforcement duties.

Our second task is to insist on police accountability. And I begin with the
Department of Justice. We are conducting a self-assessment of our own use of force
and civil rights processes, coordinated by the Inspector General, to ensure that we have
procedures in place which hold us accountable to the American people, to all of the
American people.

All law enforcement agencies -- federal, state and local -- from the director, chief
or sheriff on down, must send a clear message that misconduct will not be tolerated
and unfair treatment will not be countenanced. But this is not a responsibility of
management alone. Rank and file officers must join together to promote a climate of
integrity, civility, accountability and responsibility. Every law-enforcement agency should
have a complaint process so people can file complaints without fear. If individuals fear
retaliation, then they won't file complaints, and the agency will never learn of the
problem. And every police department should make sure that it has in place a vigorous
system for investigating allegations of misconduct thoroughly and fairly.

Third, we need to ensure that police departments recruit officers who reflect the
communities they serve, who have high standards and who are then properly trained to
deal with the stresses and the dangers of police work. In years past, too many
departments had few, if any, minority officers. That has improved significantly. We now
have, not just men in blue, but women in blue; not just whites, but people of all colors.
When someone who grows up in the neighborhood becomes an officer there, they
understand the people, they understand their concerns, and they know the languages
spoken. They are men and women our youth can look up to as role models. Old
stereotypes and prejudices are not as likely to be passed on to the next generation of
police departments if those departments represent a diverse mix of society.

Fourth, we must increase our civil rights enforcement. The steps I have outlined so
far are things we can do to prevent incidents of police misconduct in the first place. But
when they do occur, we must take swift, sure action, and that means prosecution when
appropriate.

Most cases of police excessive use of force are prosecuted by state and local
authorities. But the Justice Department plays an important role. At any given time, the
Civil Rights Division and the FBI are investigating several hundred allegations of
criminal police misconduct around the country. During the past five years the Justice
Department has criminally prosecuted
over 200 law enforcement officers for excessive force. We pursue these cases
vigorously. But we recognize that the law sets a very high standard of proof. To prove a
federal crime, we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers had the
specific intent to use more force than was reasonably necessary under the
circumstances, given their training, experience and
perceptions.

In addition to prosecuting individual officers, we also have the authority to sue
police departments when we believe there is a pattern of misconduct. Under this
authority, known as our "pattern and practice" authority, we can go to a court to force a
police department to change the way it does business. Using this authority, we are
currently investigating several law
enforcement agencies across the country. In two instances, we have negotiated
agreements with police departments to implement good practices. But as we pursue our
pattern and practice investigations, we also will be working with departments on
preventative measures so that we can address police integrity issues without litigation,
where possible.

Fifth and last, we must take steps to gather the data that will help define the
scope of the problem and measure our efforts to solve it. Right now we have only
anecdotes and allegations. We need more. For the past several years, pursuant to the
requirements of the 1994 Crime Control Act, the Department of Justice has tried to
develop ways of measuring the level of
excessive force incidents. Because police departments often don't keep such records,
and because they are not required to report to the federal government statistics on the
use of force by officers, we have had only limited success in developing the information.

That's why we're trying a new approach. Every year we conduct a survey of
households across the country, asking whether residents have been victims of a crime.
The Crime Victimization Survey is perhaps one of the most accurate reflections of law
enforcement trends. This year we're going to update the survey to include questions on
police misconduct -- questions like,"During the last year, have you had an encounter
with the police in which physical force was used?" By doing this, we can get a better
sense of the relationship people have with law enforcement and we will know whether
the efforts police departments
make are succeeding.

I believe data collection in the area of police stops is also very important. By
keeping track, by race, of who is pulled over, why they were stopped, which motorists
are subjected to searches and the outcomes of the stops, we can see where the
problems exist and how extensive they are. If the numbers show that there is not a
problem, then minority communities will have a better outlook on law enforcement and if
the numbers are, in fact, disproportionate, then police departments will be able to study
the issue and set out ways to reduce the discrepancy. I have been working with the
White House to devise a system to collect this data across the entire law enforcement
community.

In sum, I think we have begun to address the issue of police integrity in various
ways - from trying to create a dialogue between community leaders and the police to
the difficult task of trying to collect data on police abuse. I am hopeful that we can
create a system that will prevent horrible abuses from occurring - and prevent the
poisoning of the relationship between residents of communities and law enforcement on
what I hope are, at the very most, the extremely rare occasions in which incidents do
occur.

Lawyers & Racial Justice

I now want to turn to my second topic, lawyers and racial justice. I've been
thinking about this issue for some time now. When I was growing up, I read about how
a young Thurgood Marshall won battle after battle in our courts - battles to fight for
equality. Reading all of this, I was struck by the power of the law to change society for
the better. And, ultimately, I went into the legal profession to try and make society a
better place.

I am tremendously excited to publicly announce - for the first time - a project
with which I have been involved. Last Fall, President Clinton asked me to organize a
group of lawyers who could generate a plan on what lawyers could do to further the
goals of racial justice. Similar professional groups, such as those in higher education
and the faith communities, have also been meeting to discuss what they can do to
promote racial justice. But it occurred to me that lawyers have a special role to play in
this. Not only because so much of our nation's progress on race has occurred through
law - from the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws" to
the Civil Rights struggles in the 1950s and 1960s - but also because law has
historically been a tool that has created racial injustice. From the original Constitution's
protection of slavery to Jim Crow statutes, law has often been used as a mechanism to
oppress racial minorities. It is a tribute to our country that the very tool that has kept us
down has been used over the past fifty years to keep us strong.

But there is much more to be done. We need to not only continue our practice of
using litigation and the courts to promote racial justice, we also need to develop new
models for ways in which lawyers can help in this struggle. The litigation model of pro
bono work has dominated our efforts up to this point. It is time now to move into a new
phase of civil rights work for lawyers - a phase that capitalizes on all the other things
lawyers do with their time when they are not in court.

After all, you and I both know that even the hardiest of litigators does not spend
much of her or his day in the courtroom. Lawyers bring a host of other skills besides
courtroom advocacy to their clients. Consider a few examples: A transactional lawyer
might arrange financing for a deal his client is putting together. A litigator might
facilitate a dialogue between adversaries with the hopes of settling a dispute. An in-house corporate attorney may give advice to the Board of Trustees on how to structure
Articles of Incorporation to avoid disputes down the road - disputes that may have an
adverse impact on share prices. An attorney working for the State of Illinois might
counsel the Governor on ways to structure a program to insulate it from legal - and
political - attack. And, perhaps one more familiar to me than many of you: a lawyer
might develop insight about a company's problem with a proposed piece of legislation
and might seek to bring those problems to the attention of legislators - a practice all of
us refer to as lobbying.

A phrase that I think captures this diverse group of talents is "lawyers as problem
solvers." What I hope to do is create a mechanism by which lawyers - all lawyers - can
contribute to the task of furthering racial justice. The transactional lawyer who puts
deals together might set up financing for an inner-city revitalization project -- such as in
Chicago's South Side. A litigator's experience with settlement negotiations might
provide her with the insight necessary to begin a dialogue between community leaders
and law enforcement representatives on issues such as racial profiling and excessive
use of force. An in-house corporate attorney might put her talents to use in helping a
minority-owned business succeed. A lobbyist might use his connections to develop
ways to improve financing of local schools. And so on. My goal is to try to get you
thinking about all of the projects that we have neglected over the past years because
we have thought about the contribution lawyers make to civil rights as largely a
courtroom struggle.

I have asked President Clinton to kick-off this campaign by challenging the bar to
take a more active role in this process. I hope that he will issue a Call to the Bar that
will focus on the theme of racial justice, and stress ways in which lawyers can contribute
to it. He has been deeply influenced by President Kennedy's call to lawyers in 1963 in
which Kennedy challenged the bar to come up with ways to further race relations. That
call eventually led to the formation of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under
Law, a Committee that has done so much for America. The Lawyers' Committee now
has a national office in Washington, and affiliates in eight other cities - including one
here in Chicago. Over the past years, the Committee has provided legal assistance to
individuals and civil rights causes by drawing upon the insight and resources of private
law firms. The President's hope, and mine as well, is that a renewed call to action -
thirty six years after President Kennedy made his - will encourage lawyers to develop
the kind of innovative projects I have been speaking about.

Now let me be frank: To accomplish this, I need your help. I need your ideas,
and I need your participation. If you have projects that you think are worthy of
emulating on a national scale, please send them to me. And if you are willing to
contribute some of your time to help organize the bar in this city to create a structure for
implementing the projects you all identify as important, that will help us along
tremendously. I do not want this to be something that comes out of Washington, out of
touch to what people in individual cities need, or what lawyers in individual cities might
see as their unique contribution. And so, I need you, and I ask that you join with me.

III. CONCLUSION

I have come here, to what very well might be my favorite city, to announce
publicly what I hope to be one of the most important things I will do in my life - help
organize the bar to further racial justice. If we can work together on this task, I am
confident that this country can be made even greater than it is now.